HISTORY, ROMANCE AND...CATS!
Grace Elliot leads a double life as a vet by day and author of intelligent historical fiction by night. Grace is an avid reader and believes that smart people need to read romance - as an antidote to the modern world!
Grace is also obsessed by all things feline.

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Wednesday, 5 September 2012

Like Father, Like Son? - Zoophagy #2

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Photo courtesy of CatPictures.net

Last week's post looked at the great
British eccentric, Jack Buckland, on his mission to eat exotic animals - but
what is perhaps not surprising is that his father was pretty weird too! The Very
Rev. Dc. William Buckland (1784 - 1856) was a theologian, geologist and
zoologist. Perhaps it's some measure of their family life, that it was William
who introduced is son to the idea of zoophagy (see last week's post). In his
early life, to prove his theory that bird droppings made excellent fertilizer,
William used droppings to write the word "guano" over the lawn of his
Oxford college.
In due course when summer came, the letters were plain to read from a first
floor window.

The Very Rev. Dc. William Buckland.

Another indication of eccentricity was that
one night Dc. Buckland was journeying to London
when he got lost. His solution was to dismount from his horse, and trusting his
extraordinary sense of taste, licked a handful of soil and proclaimed,
"Uxbridge!" and then went on his way.

A man of many talents, as well as being a
theologian, Dc. Buckland was a palaeontologist and zoologist. Strange as it
seems these disciplines are not unrelated because he studied
fossil records and from that evidence proposed a 'gap theory' of creation.

This theory tried to reconcile the
geological evidence that the earth was very old, with the genesis account of
creation. Buckland proposed there had been two distinct periods of creation,
separated by an unimaginable period of time. Indeed, in his early career he
thought he'd found geological evidence of the biblical flood, work later built
on by Louis Agassiz who suggested there'd been an ice age.

A contemporary cartoon of Dc.Buckland investigating a site of scientific interest.

For Buckland's work with the fossil record
he was made a member of the Royal Societybut this eccentric's talents seem to
know no end as he also became president of the Geological Society. He analysed
fossilised bones to describe a creature he named "Megalosaurus",
which later became recognised as the first scientifically catalogued dinosaur. As
a measure of his eccentricity, Buckland preferred to do his excavations and
digging wearing full academic dress!

A model Megalosaurus - photo courtesy of Mike Pennington.

Buckland married another fossil enthusiast,
Mary. One story goes that she helped him decipher fossil footprints found in a
lump of sandstone, by spreading flour over the kitchen table. She then let
their pet tortoise walk across the table top and then Buckland was able to
recognise the similarity of the footprint.

It is perhaps a fitting end, that when
William Buckland died, when the gravedigger started turning over the plot a
layer of Jurassic limestone was discovered, which had to be cleared with
explosives.

Another
eminent geologist penned the following poem in tribute:

Where shall we our great
Professor inter

That in peace may rest his
bones?

If we hew him a rocky
sepulchre

He’ll rise and break the
stones

And examine each stratum
that lies around

For he’s quite in his
element underground

Fossil fish - photo courtesy of FairlyBuoyant.

All of this leaves me wondering how much upbringing influences children? Do you think Jack would have been less interested in eating giraffes, if his father William had been more 'normal'? And what is 'normal' anyway?
Do leave a comment!

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